This essay will be the 300th Eaganblog. Another two years under the bridge, over the dam, and out to the open sea. As I have done at previous century marks, I will take this moment to reflect on the state of my blog.

I like that series of water metaphors in the first paragraph, especially with the last one being unlike the first two. That form is a classic set-up for a laugh or at the very least a little wrinkle in an otherwise flat stretch of prose. It may be a sin to over-use such forms, but it’s only a venial sin. Mortal sins like using too many modifiers are much more of a cause for concern, and all I can say is that I’m trying. More editing and better verbs are my way to salvation.

I try to avoid repeating anything, though. For instance, I’ve tried to keep things fresh by mixing in some doggerel and a few epigrams to go with all the classic five-paragraph essays. There’s nothing wrong with essays, I suppose. Most columnists never deviate from that format, and they manage to get their points across. But I am not bound by word counts or column inches. There is no reason to limit myself, so I’m always on the lookout for something new. An occasional palindrome, perhaps, or themed lists, or mini-fables. Or just one word, if it’s a good’n.

There is one kind of repetition, however, that I have fallen prey to over the last hundred weeks. I keep coming back to one particular category of subject matter, and I can’t seem to help myself. In case you haven’t noticed, there is a link on my blog archives that will take you to all my blogs in a particular category. [This one, for instance, will go into “Language,” even though that might be a stretch. “Writing” would be a better classification for this piece, but there are only eight choices currently available and that is not one of them.] If you hit that link and bother to look closely, you will find that the “Politics” group has grown alarmingly of late. My last reflective blog (#201, The Upside of Down) was listed under “Politics.” That essay, it appears, was a harbinger for what has been an explosion of blogs under that heading.

Even though I am a political cartoonist, I had tried to avoid writing too much on that topic. Eaganblog gives me a chance to talk about a lot of things that my cartoons never touch. I like that. There were only six “Politics” entries in the first year, for example, while my other writing roamed all over the place. Over the last twelve months, by contrast, I’ve produced twenty-one. I tell myself that we have entered a dangerous time in our domestic politics, and that the elevation of he-who-must-not-be-named requires that I step up and speak.

I try to resist that call, but it’s hard. I’ve got one bubbling up even now that is burning to get out and get heard. It’s better not to suppress such impulses, but I am concerned that “Politics” is now the second-biggest category in a feature I had hoped would be more about the broader world. I need to get back to such categories as “Sports,” which has a mere eight entries to its name. “Humor,” poor thing, only has four. As soon as we get rid of this guy, I hope to get back to Plan A. We’ll all be relieved when that day comes.

So I promise…as soon as the fever breaks and harmony begins returning to our world, I will give politics the rest it deserves. Until then, we will have to wait for explorations of such topics as the LIGO gravity wave detector, the play of Good vs. Evil in athletics, and why farts are funny. See what I did there?